Public Order Act 1986

Part 1 - New offences

Section 1 - Riot

Section 2 - Violent disorder

Section 3 - Affray

Section 4 - Fear or provocation of violence

Section 4A - Intentional harassment, alarm or distress  

added by section 154 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

Section 5 - Harassment, alarm or distress

Section 8 - Interpretation

This section defines the words "dwelling" and "violence".

Section 9 - Offences abolished

Section 9(1) abolished the common law offences of riot, rout, unlawful assembly and affray.

Section 9(2) abolished the offences under:

section 1 of the Tumultuous Petitioning Act 1661

section 1 of the Shipping Offences Act 1793

section 23 of the Seditious Meetings Act 1817

section 5 of the Public Order Act 1936

Part 2 - Processions and assemblies

Section 11 - Advance notice of public processions 

requires at least 6 clear days' written notice to be given to the police before most public processions, including details of the intended time and route, and giving the name and address of at least one person proposing to organise it; creates offences for the organisers of a procession if they do not give sufficient notice, or if the procession diverges from the notified time or route

Section 12 - Imposing conditions on public processions 

provides police the power to impose conditions on processions "to prevent serious public disorder, serious criminal damage or serious disruption to the life of the community"

Section 13 - Prohibiting public processions 

Chief Police Officer has the power to ban public processions up to three months by applying to local authority for a banning order which needs subsequent confirmation from the Home Secretary.

Section 14 - Imposing conditions on public assemblies 

provides police the power to impose conditions on assemblies "to prevent serious public disorder, serious criminal damage or serious disruption to the life of the community". The conditions are limited to the specifying of:

the number of people who may take part,

the location of the assembly, and

its maximum duration.

Section 14A -Prohibiting trespassory assemblies 

added by section 70 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, to control "raves"

Section 16 - Public Assembly 

Means an assembly of 20 or more persons in a public place which is wholly or partly open to the air.

Parts 3 and 3A- Racial and religious hatred

If the act is intended to stir up racial hatred Part 3 of the Act creates offences of

use of words or behaviour or display of written material (section 18),

publishing or distributing written material (section 19),

public performance of a play (section 20),

distributing, showing or playing a recording (section 21),

broadcasting (section 22). or

possession of racially inflammatory material (section 23)

Acts intended to stir up religious hatred are proscribed in POA Part 3A by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (RRHA) with the insertion of new sections 29A to 29N. The RRHA bill, which was introduced by Home Secretary David Blunkett, was amended several times in the House of Lords and ultimately the Blair government was forced to accept the substitute words.

To stir uphatred on the grounds of sexual orientation was to be proscribed by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 in POA Part 3A section 29AB. This legislation was introduced by David Hanson MP.

The Act and Article 11 of ECHR

The Act should be considered in connection with Article 11 of European Convention on Human Rights, which grants people the rights of (peaceful) assembly and freedom of association with others.

Misuse of section 14

The Police have been accused of misusing the powers in section 14 on several occasions. During the 2009 G-20 London summit protests journalists were forced to leave the protests by police who threatened them with arrest.

The campaign to reform section 5

The 'Reform Section 5' campaign was established in May 2012 to garner support for an alteration of section 5, and led to an increase in the threshold from "abusive or insulting" to "abusive" (words, etc). The campaign was supported by a range of groups and famous individuals. These included the National Secular Society, the Christian Institute, the Bow Group and The Freedom Association. Actors Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry also voiced their support.